As far as I understand; it’s not the tools used that makes this illegal, but the realism/accuracy of the final product regardless of how it was produced.
If you were to have a high proficiency with manual Photoshop and produced similar quality fakes, you’d be committing the same crime(s)
creating child sex abuse images
and
offenses against their victims’ moral integrity
The thing is, AI tools are becoming more and more accessible to teens. Time, effort, and skill are no longer roadblocks to creating these images; which leaves very very little in an irresponsible teenagers way…
Which still seems kinda dumb. How realistic is too realistic? You could make a legal standard of “photography-like”, or something, just to define who to convict, but you still haven’t really justified why.
The sentence in this case is just classes, though, so I’ll leave my pitchfork in the shed.
Did… Did you just ask; why creating photo-realistic sexually explicit material of real children, should be illegal?
Keep in mind these were other kids their age. We’re not talking about pedo stuff here.
All the recent stuff about deepfakes feels a bit moral-panic-y to me. I think we should have a better reason than just ick before anyone gets thrown in jail.